The popularity of Mayday Parade has exploded over the last few years. The Tallahassee, Florida band released their major-label debut, Anywhere But Here, in 2009 and have been touring extensively all over the world. In early 2011 the quintet released an acoustic EP, Valdosta, which includes re-recordings of four fan favorites and two brand new songs.
Lead vocalist Derek Sanders, guitarists Alex Garcia and Brooks Betts, drummer Jake Bundrick, and bassist Jeremy Lenzo are collectively looking forward to the remainder of 2011 and beyond, with many exciting things for fans to look forward to. I recently spoke with Sanders about their upcoming projects and plans.
First off, congratulations – I understand Songkick named Mayday Parade the hardest working band of 2010 with 194 dates played.
You know that's pretty crazy, but one thing that's even weirder about that is that we feel like last year wasn't even our busiest year. I think in 2008 we played even more shows than that.
Do you ever get burned out being on the road that often?
For the most part, it's always really cool. We love being on the road as much as we can. We get to spend a couple weeks here and there with family and friends.
You're playing the Bamboozle Festival again.
Yeah, we're playing Friday [April 29, 2011].
You last played Bamboozle in 2008. Are you excited to be back?
Yeah, it's going to be insane. I can't believe we're doing it on the main stage. We played a smaller stage in 2008, and it was one of the biggest shows we've ever played. There was an insane amount of people.
What has the fan reaction been like for the new Valdosta EP?
Everything seems to be pretty cool so far. Obviously the one point that is a little weird about it – the thing we were expecting people to judge kind of hard – is that we did a couple songs where Jake is singing the parts that Jason was singing before. But we loved doing it. I always appreciated when bands put out little side things, like B-sides or acoustic things.
We didn't spend a whole lot of time focusing it. We just did it fast in a studio close to hand. The record that we just finished is what we put most of our time into. We're actually playing one of the new songs from Valdosta, "Terrible Things," we're playing that one on the new tour.
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